THE APPROACH ...

Given the task of proposing a memorial gallery as a simple public space, the approach by dKON 4 takes an unusual turn of first to deconstruct the very notion of memorial and gallery, second to reconstruct the memorial or gallery into a form that is no longer common.

RE/DE-CONSTRUCTING THE MEMORIAL

A common meaning of a memorial can be a statute of a reminder of someone. Memorial taken from the core word, memory is but a non-physical activity of the mind. Therefore, it also reads as a remembrance. Yet, in the current age of nanotechnology memory is but a chip. Can a chip set be considered a memorial? Possibility of inserting directly into our brain. Rather can a memorial, taken from the root word memo, be a piece of stick on memo? The difficulty in contemplating such discourse arising from the very notion of a signifier of a memorial versus the signified of the memorial. Arising from such, and in contemplation of Wittgenstein’s paradox of “duckrabbit”, a memorial in memory of a self-versus her persona was reconstructed. Being the subject matter deceased, we place her in memorial as a funeral parlor. In the absent of herself, we remember her by the Clinique. We froze her ego as a photographic studio. We knew her story from her book and thus immortalized her in a bookshop. We crystalize her pain in a gallery for MACC. We personified her through extreme parks. We communicate with her soul through a meditation center. We pray to her through the chapel of her faith. We embraced her love via the nuptial gallery. So, the remaining question is, what is your memorial?

​RE/DE-CONSTRUCTING THE GALLERY

A space to display the work of art/artefact. In contemplating the so called space, what stand in between? Assuming a fish in the aquarium may ask, what is the cat doing outside of the water… by the same token, the cat may ask, why is the fish in the water? A conflicting dialogue between the artefact and the observer… and in such case, who is the spectator and who is the showman? Where is the threshold between them? Could it be a point? A vector? A plane? Or simply an object? Or a collective of objects as a matrix? When a point is contemplated, the object/artefact is the observer/subject. Could the object/artefact be observing the subject? But what if an object/artefact has no one observing? Or there is observer but no object/artefact? Perhaps, the object/artefact is the observer. The building containing the object/artefact is the object/artefact itself? The urbanscape comprising the building containing the object/artefact is the object/artefact itself? So, how does your gallery takes form?